How it all started

Early one morning I was going over some old images and I came across this image I shot few years ago. A female nude in a Landscape shot in Iceland.

The oldest image in the Bare Landscapes series and the only one shot on film.

I have shot this type of images before from time to time and I have always liked this concept. The contrast between the landscape and the nude body fascinates me, both in tone and texture. This particular image was shot on a Hazzelblad and black and white film. I scanned the negative and as I started to work on the image it dawned on me that I should do a whole series of these. I woke up my wife and told her about this decision of mine. She was not to happy… not because of my decision of photographing nudes in Iceland but about being woken up 7am on Christmas morning.

This image started it all and is the only image that was not specifically shot for the Bare Landscapes project and the only image shot on film. There is another interesting story about this image but I will leave that for another post…

Living in Los Angeles and wanting to shoot this project in Iceland, my home country, made it a bit more complicated. I know the country rather well and Iceland has many very well known, iconic places. However, I decided not to use those places for the most part, but if I did, at least try to get a different angle on it. Rather than showing the landscape I wanted to show the texture and the feel of the landscape in contrast with the female body.